Insisting that God is all powerful presumes
that humans can use language to characterize God accurately. That presumption
is false. God is the mystery that exists beyond the limits of human language, a
view often labelled the via negativa. That is, every statement about who
God is can be denied, pointing to a reality that lies beyond human description.

Furthermore, the characterization of God as
omnipotent developed in the pre-scientific era, an era dominated by a worldview
based upon a three-story universe (heaven, earth, and hell) in which humans
were the pinnacle and center of creation. We know now that the cosmos has at
least four dimensions, is vaster than humans can measure, and that earth with
its human occupants reside not at the center but in a corner of the cosmos. God’s
power may be far greater than any human power and thus inspire claims in
scripture and other sources that God is all powerful. Nevertheless, human
perceptions of God’s power are not logically synonymous with God actually being
omnipotent. Thus liturgical, scriptural, and theological assertions of God’s
almighty power are best understood as devotional rather than factual statements.

Prayers by faithful people to end, or at least
to alleviate, great evils that appear to avail nothing have led theologians
since the nineteenth century to argue that God is not omnipotent. Among these evils
are the Holocaust, widespread famines, the suffering caused by natural
disasters (hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, droughts, etc.), and painful,
unwarranted suffering from diseases like pancreatic cancer and childhood
blindness.

Some theologians now contend that in creating the cosmos, God
surrendered certain powers as a necessary step to infusing creation with a
degree of limited autonomy. Other, bolder theologians have proposed that God
was never all powerful. These ideas, along with other conceptualizations of a
non-omnipotent God, are speculative, an assessment consistent with the via negativa.
Nobody can truly know whether God is all powerful.

Critically, for persons of faith, God is active in the cosmos. We may conceive
of God as love, light, or more philosophically as the force that lures actual
entities towards more abundant life. This is the presence or force to whom Jesus
bore witness. This is the presence or force that gives life without corroding or
corrupting.